India Looks to Its President After an Indecisive Election

By SANJOY HAZARIKA, Special to The New York Times

Published: November 27, 1989

NEW DELHI, Nov. 26—
With neither the Congress Party of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi nor the opposition heading for a clear majority in Parliament, attention turned today to President Ramaswamy Venkataraman, a former Gandhi aide who now apparently has the power to tap either side to form a coalition Government.

''The ruling party has no prior claim to be called upon to form the Government,'' said Madhu Limaye, a constitutional expert. ''It has been rejected by the people and reduced to a minority.''

Under the Indian Constitution, the presidency is largely a ceremonial post, and traditionally it has been held by members of the governing party, which except for a brief period in the late 1970's has been the Congress Party.

Largely because power has been held so consistently by the Congress Party, there is little precedent for a transfer of power to a competing party or to a coalition. This contributed to confusion in New Delhi today over just how free a hand Mr. Venkataraman will have in deciding which party to approach to lead a new government. Asserting Independence

Spokesmen for the ruling party, for example, said that the President should not ask the National Front, the opposition alliance, on the grounds that there is no guarantee it will hold together for a full five-year term and because it is too disparate a grouping.

But President Venkataraman has asserted his independence in recent days. He ordered the Election Commission to investigate reports of electoral fraud by Congress Party workers in the Prime Minister's constituency in Amethi; as a result, voting will be held again in nearly 100 voting districts on Monday, although the commission has turned down the demand of the opposition candidate, Rajmohan Gandhi, for a new vote in the entire constituency.

Rajmohan Gandhi - the grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who led the independence movement against Britain -said today when asked whether the National Front should be called on to form the next Government, ''I expect the President of India to uphold the Constitution, to uphold the highest democratic traditions and moral standards.'' A Party Veteran

Mr. Venkataraman, a 78-year-old Congress Party veteran with white hair and a gentle, grandfatherly air, also has to decide whether to dissolve the existing lower house of Parliament immediately and replace it with the new Parliament or allow the old legislature to run its full term until next January.

The National Front appears to be more able than the Congress Party to put together a parliamentary majority if called upon to form a Government. A coalition of four national and regional parties led by Viswanath Pratap Singh, it is allied with the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, other regional parties and the two major Communist parties.

The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist parties are ideologically opposed to each other, and it is unclear whether they would join a Front-led Government or support it from outside. The Bharatiya Janata Party already has said that it will not support a government that includes Communists. The Communist Party of India-Marxist said this month that it would not like to join a government in New Delhi.

Lawyers and lawmakers familiar with the Constitution say that Mr. Venkataraman faces difficult choices that have been confronted only once before by an Indian President. In 1979, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy dissolved Parliament after independently deciding that no party had the ability to form a stable Government and face a confidence test before Parliament.

This decision followed two months of defections from the ruling Janata Party of Prime Minister Morarji Desai and his successor, Charan Singh. The President dissolved Parlaiment and ordered new elections that returned Indira Gandhi to power in 1980 with a landslide majority.

Politicians from the Congress Party and the opposition, as well as political commentators, talked tonight of another possibility: new elections within a few months to avoid political instability should any group fail to govern effectively.

Mr. Venkataraman was Defense Minister and Finance Minister under Indira Gandhi, Mr. Gandhi's mother, before he was nominated as Vice President. In July 1987, he easily won election to the presidency.

Mr. Venkataraman made his mark as a trade union organizer in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in the 1950's and later was appointed a local minister for industry and labor. He is a native of Tamil Nadu, where the Congress Party and a regional ally swept the election.